| Industry | Automotive |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bought/Closed |
| Successor | MAN AG |
| Founded | 1933 |
| Founder(s) | Edwin Richard Foden |
| Defunct | 2007 |
| Headquarters | Sandbach, Cheshire, England |
| Products | Trucks |
| Parent | MAN AG |
| Website | ERF.com |
ERF was a British truck manufacturer. Established in 1933 by Dennis Foden, its factory in Sandbach, Cheshire was closed in 2002, and finished as a marque by owner MAN AG in 2007.
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Established in 1933 by Dennis Foden, whose father, Edwin Richard Foden had lately been fired from Fodens Ltd by his step mother. ERF lTD, was founded by Dennis Foden but named in honour of his father. There was no squabble over steam versus diesel; all that is a fabrication. One founder's son, Billy, went to live in Australia in 1924 and the other son, Edwin Richard retired after being fired and went to live in Blackpool. Based in Sandbach, Cheshire, the company made their own chassis and cabs, originally with engines from Gardner, but later also Cummins, Perkins, Detroit Diesel and Caterpillar Inc..
ERFs used to be marketed under the Western Star badge in some countries such as Australia. It also built a specialist fire engine chassis, with a body built on by in-house company JH Jennings, later Cheshire Fire Engineering. However, when recession came in the early 1980s and production fell from a total output of 4,000 chassis per annum, CFE was sold to management to eventually become Saxon Sanbec.
The company was bought by Canadian truck maker Western Star in 1996. However, after PACCAR's purchase of Foden, DAF Trucks and Leyland Trucks increased competitive pressure, and Western Star was approached by Freightliner Trucks corporation, the decision was made to sell ERF.
In 2000, ERF became part of MAN AG. MAN bought the company on the understanding that ERF was profitable, but it was suggested that its Financial Controller had for years been syphoning monies from the company, but a very strong rumour has it that he was made a scapegoat for someone much higher up the tree, and resultantly MAN sued Western Star successfully in the British courts. Freightliner tried to sue Western Star and ERF's former auditors, but failed on technical grounds of corporate negligence.[1]
ERF's final model range consisted of the ECT, ECM and ECL built on MAN's production line in Nuremberg (for heavy trucks), and a plant in Sandbach for light trucks - positioned to win a contract from the Ministry of Defence for 8,000 new British Armed Forces trucks.
All the ERF trucks were based on MAN's existing products, the only difference being that the ERF model came with the option of specifying use of Cummins ISMe power plant as an alternate to MAN's own D20 common rail power-plant. The Sandbach factory was closed by MAN in 2002, with production of the ECT, ECM and ECL units moved to Salzburg, Austria where they are built on the same facilities as their identical MAN counterparts.
In the light of Cummins' intransigence on upgrading the ISMe engine to comply with the Euro4 emission regulations, MAN initially took the decision to replace it completely with the new series of MAN D20 engines.[2] With ERF badging only used for the British market, MAN decided to cease the supply of ERF badged trucks from July 2007.